Sleeping Souls

As the newly appointed groundskeeper at Junction Lake, a picturesque, family-owned amusement park in southern New Hampshire, the last thing Duncan Waynewright needs is a slew of involuntary, supernatural experiences that afford him glimpses of alternate realities and otherworldly beings. Duncan's wife, Mia, thinks he's losing his mind until Wade, their five-and-a-half-year-old son, begins displaying similarly odd behavior-appearing to be prescient and talking about his own encounters with strange entities. Mia struggles to protect her children and her own sanity as Duncan's dream job becomes ground zero for a series of paranormal occurrences. The family's veil of reality continues to be pulled away, rousting them all from their proverbial sleep and pointing them towards previously unimaginable states of mind and soul. After a literal and figurative roller coaster ride into the depths of numinous mystery, Duncan develops an inimitable bond with cowboy wannabe and bawdy wisecracker Jared Wilson, the amusement park's chief ride engineer. Much welcomed answers come in the form of an exotic and bizarre being who reveals herself to both Duncan and Wade in their dreams. Jared solves a few riddles himself, uncovering some rather peculiar facts about Walter Davies, the owner of Junction Lake. Jared and Duncan uneasily begin to question their boss's true identity. When events culminate at, on, in, and above the lake one night, Duncan is led to a psycho-spiritual crossroads. He decides to take the plunge and forge ahead into uncharted territory, both physical and metaphysical.

Duncan Waynewright's odyssey continues. The puzzles he and Jared solve begin to dilate and to breed exponentially more mystery. Duncan is taken on a tour deep inside his own consciousness where the extreme personal nature of all that has transpired is revealed to him. Walter Davies, aware that Duncan and Jared are inching towards awareness of his true mission at Junction Lake, welcomes his employees into a secret and cryptic world. Jared's intuitive breed of ribald humor helps Duncan maintain a sliver of sanity even as Mia's own otherworldly experiences multiply. Jared's wife, Janette, and Mia develop a profound and inexplicable connection and Janette admits she's been keeping arcane secrets her entire life. The two couples go on a quest to find out if their shared encounters are happening by chance or if it is all being orchestrated by something not of this world. They yearn to know the basis of the connection they all share with each other. Duncan seeks to find out why he and Wade are the only ones who have been privileged to meet the bizarrely magnificent woman of their dreams and if she even really exists. He and Wade further wish to know why she's here, if what she's been telling them is true, and why Duncan finds her so hauntingly familiar. When the Waynewrights and Wilsons-and all their children-are invited for dinner at the Davies' house up at Junction Lake, some of these wishes come true. But nothing can prepare them for what they get for dessert.